


Child of Our Time

by CardboardMoose



Category: Metalocalypse
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-21
Updated: 2014-03-21
Packaged: 2018-01-16 12:35:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1347682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CardboardMoose/pseuds/CardboardMoose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles is a child of prophecy. That is not necessarily a good thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Child of Our Time

**Author's Note:**

> One day I thought "what if Charles had known about the prophecy before he met the band?". And then this happened. I wish I had an Uncle Ishnifus.
> 
> Additional activity: spot the reference. Make it a drinking game, if you don't value your health.

November 3rd, 1965

To Lauri and Melinda Offdensen of Babylon, New York: A son, Charles Foster.

\---

Charles' earliest memory was barely a memory at all; little more than a vague blur of voices and incense and candlelight, and being at once the most and least important person in the room. When questioned in later in life, his parents would hum and haw, and suppose that it was a Mass, and how funny that something so ordinary should be the very first thing he remembers. Charles supposed so. It was certainly a familiar atmosphere, black robes and old men filling the space with the warm fug of belief.

His second memory was of his father's hands - strong hands, hands that to a small boy could move the world - picking him up and away from the brazier he had been reaching for.

"Don't touch the fire, Charles," the deep voice had said, gentle but firm as iron. "The fire burns."

He hadn't understood then.

He did now.

\---

If you were to ask Charles Foster Offdensen, late of Dethklok Inc., about his childhood, he would perhaps smile a little and talk about a modest home in the suburbs, a mother who wrote for the local paper and a father who played baseball with him after church. He might even tell you about a dog (called Absu, with one ear up and one ear down, who was always loyal) and bonfires on the beach, gazing across the bay at the stars and the distant shore.

What he would probably not tell you about would be the rack of swords in the basement, or the lessons in ancient Sumerian, or the precise nature of the aforementioned church. He would not tell you about the weight of prophecy on the shoulders of a child, or the sound of his mother weeping when she thought he could not hear. He would not tell you about his father's hands shaking as he turned the pages of the holy books. Some things are not for the ears of others.

It was not a bad childhood, all things told. He had friends at school, though never many, he was rarely in trouble, he ate well and was never beaten. True, the friends he had were rarely allowed to come to his house, and much of his after-school time was taken up with "extra classes", but Charles was an industrious boy and enjoyed the challenge of learning. Even if learning was two hours of repeating the same sword drill. Even if learning was reciting the scriptures until his voice cracked.

One day, for show and tell, a classmate brought in a book of the kind that were popular at the time - an adventure story, printed with his own name as that of the protagonist. The rest of the class were duly impressed, but Charles was not. A story about oneself riding a giraffe rather paled in comparison to ancient prophecies in which one helped to bring about the dawning of a new world. The giraffe thing wasn't even true.

A different child would have said as much; would, in the way of children, tossed his nose in the air and pointed out that _his_ stories were much better. But Charles knew the value of silence, had known it all his life. You must be quiet, his mother had said. You must keep to yourself. You are made for greater things than this. You must always remember that.

So Charles read, and studied, and practiced. He brought interesting rocks to show and tell and did well on tests and smiled when it was expected of him, and drew little attention, except perhaps from the more perceptive of teachers. They would write things such as "Charles will go far, if he continues to apply himself".

They didn't know the half of it.  

\---

_Raise not your swords against the coming of the night, for the night is blessed amongst all things, and blessed shall be those that welcome it into their dwelling-places. The night maketh blind they that fight it, but gives true sight to them that maketh their peace with it. It maketh strong its chosen, and casts aside those that would stand against them._

_Make yourself one with the night, o children of the black earth, and it will welcome you._

Hermitage 21:2-4

\---

Most children have "aunts" and "uncles" - friends of their parents who take an interest in their upbringing, give them gifts and what wisdom they may possess, and if they are lucky $10 on birthdays and Christmas. Some may even have acquaintances of that description who are men of the cloth.

It is probably fair to say that few children have an Uncle Ishnifus Meaddle, High Holy Priest of the Church of the Black Clock, whose word is prophecy, whose order is law.

Charles loved his Uncle Ishnifus very much. He was kind, and attentive, and sometimes brought him sweets. He also taught him the old tongues of prophecy after school on Thursdays, and supervised his fencing instruction on Sunday mornings. The hooded figures who sometimes accompanied him treated him with deference, which would have made Charles giggle had he been a less serious child. After all, he was only Uncle Ishnifus.

Uncle Ishnifus, if Charles was honest - and he always was, with himself, he didn't know how to be anything else - was a welcome relief from his parents, at times. He understood that the prophecy was important, and that his role in it was of great import to his parents and their friends, but sometimes it felt as though the weight of the world rested upon him, and that he had no choice in the matter. As much as his parents took comfort in the certainty of the Church, their voices still broke on the title which would one day fall upon him.

The Dead Man.

Even Uncle Ishnifus didn't know exactly what that meant. Charles rather hoped it was metaphorical, like in books - maybe he would be so quiet or still or old people thought him dead? If he was to die, how was he to guide the Great Ones through their journey, or to fight the Half Man? Prophecy was vague, and yet it was all they had. It made a poor foundation for the life of a child.

\---

The troubles started with a girl, as these things are known to do.

Charles was fifteen, and over the past two weeks he had been seen in the company of a young woman. Her name was Anahita, and she was pretty, and clever, and an unacceptable distraction from the great work to which he was supposed to be dedicating his time. He had been late home from school, shirking studies, distracted during fencing practice, sloppy with his Sumerian grammar. He had even asked permission to miss Mass in order to take her to see a movie.

There was a fight.

It was not necessarily a fight by the standards of other teenagers. No-one threw things, there were few raised voices, and no bedroom doors were slammed, but a quiet and resourceful young man knew how to make his opinions on being forced to breathe incense instead of blush in the darkness of a movie theatre well known. For the first time since he was old enough to be allowed in the cookie jar, an air of recrimination filled the house.

As it turned out, the romance fizzled within the month, and nothing more was said of it. Charles rededicated himself to the great work, and his parents let go a sigh of relief. They had their son back.

It wasn't to last.

\---

_And so it came to pass in those days that there was a prophet who dwelled in a village on the mountain nearby. Hearing this, a group of the faithful went unto him, and sat at his feet, and listened to his foretellings. The first one asked, "Teacher, how shall we know the coming of the time that is foretold?"_

_The prophet said, "There will be a great cataclysm, such as has never been seen before in the time of men. A dark sea will spill forth from a mountain of fire, and the oceans will be as blood, and a star will fall from the heavens, and the world will know a great darkness upon it."_

_The second asked, "Teacher, by what sign shall we know the ones who shall deliver us?"_

_The prophet said, "Five shall be the number of them, and each shall wield a weapon of great power. They will set themselves apart from the common man, but scales shall cloud their eyes, and the nature of their destiny will be unknown to them."_

_And the final one asked, "Teacher, who will show them their destiny?"_

Gaahl 4:13-19

\---

There was not another girl. There was, however, another argument.

Charles was seventeen, and college loomed large on the horizon. His grades were good, his SAT scores – especially high in math, to his parents’ surprise – triumphant by most standards. In theory, he had his pick of the country’s educational institutions. In practice, it wasn’t quite so simple.

“I will not let you walk into temptation, young man!”

The voice had been strong, once, but now there was a crack running through it like wood left out in the sun too long. It was not a voice accustomed to being raised.

“I don’t see how you have a choice.”

Younger, this voice, and with an edge to it born of anger long-suppressed, long-denied. It was not shaking, but some stray overtone suggested that that was a possibility, or a threat.

A door, opening. Footsteps, pounding the innocent floor.

“Don’t you walk away from me! I have not brought you up to forget your purpose. Have you forgotten what’s riding on you?”

“ _You never let me forget_.”

Fifteen years hence, that voice, that tone would stop an army in its tracks and turn it on its heel. At this time, in this place, it failed to stop a single middle-aged man. There was a sound. It was objectively the sharp, concrete sound of flesh hitting flesh. It was also, more importantly, the sound of a line being crossed.

There were more words, but they are unimportant, for all they could not be undone, for all they would be regretted later, once the fires of anger had died down. What is important is the thin, striding figure that walked out the door, duffel bag in hand, and did not look back.

\---

It was four years and eleven months later, and Charles was on his way to becoming really quite drunk.

This was an unusual state of affairs, and somewhat unwelcome, rather like his presence in the bar. But friendship brings its own burdens, and he had promised Markus that they would finally celebrate their graduation properly. Properly, apparently, meant jägerbombs in a grimy metal bar somewhere in Allston. Charles would have preferred a quiet dinner and maybe some good brandy, but you couldn’t have everything in life.

He grimaced. Now that was a truism. Two months out of Harvard, _summa cum laude_ , and not a job nor a stable relationship nor a decent apartment to be seen. It wasn’t like he wasn’t capable, hadn’t proved himself to be intelligent, organised, driven, everything else the last four years were supposed to have made him. This was the time he was supposed to spend landing a good job and starting the mundane routine of his adult life.

He just...hadn’t. It hadn’t happened. He’d whiled away his days vaguely browsing job listings that he never applied for, looking at apartments he never went back to. There was some reason, some mental block stopping him, and he wasn’t sure what it was. He was stagnating here, in his shitty apartment in this shitty neighbourhood, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to move on.

He sighed, sipped his drink, looked disinterestedly over at the empty stage at one end of the bar. There was a surprising number of people milling around in front of the barrier, considering it was a Thursday night and no-one he’d heard of was playing. The buzz in the room was low but intense, and people were bouncing on their toes in anticipation, talking amongst themselves with more excitement than he might have expected.

He nudged Markus, inquired as to who’s on next. Markus shrugged in his turn, muttered something about...Deathknell? Deadclock? Nothing that meant anything to Charles, at any rate. He thanked him and let him go back to chatting up the barmaid.

When the first chord sounded there was a moment of dead silence from the crowd, followed by a roar so rapturous Charles furrowed his brow in confusion. If this band was so good, why on earth were they playing a dive like this? And why had he not heard of them, at least through Markus’ excited scene reports? He didn’t think he was that out of the loop.

The band walked on stage, and the next thirty minutes of Charles’ life were something of a blur. There was music, music drawn from the depths of the living earth, a drumbeat that felt like a gunshot to his heart, a growl that was the scream of a thousand dead gods. There were five men on that stage, but Charles saw something else entirely. Charles saw prophecy.

\---

_And I saw in that place a people without hope, for their gods had abandoned them to the mercy of their enemies. Their temples lay empty, for their priests had joined the people in the streets, and raised their hands to the sky in vain supplication. And the name of that place was called Bal-Sagoth, the meeting place of gods, and the people its townsfolk._

_The beasts of the field had been slaughtered in sacrifice, and the ceremonial oil, and the candles that were kept for the holy days, but there had been no answer. The people were afraid, for they heard outside their walls the chanting of many armies, and knew that this was the time of their ending._

_But then there came a man to the square in the centre of Bal-Sagoth, which they called Thule. He was unknown to the people for he had come to the town only with the last moon, yet they quieted at his word, and listened. And the man said,_

_“Cry not, ye people! This is not our time to die. Though the armies of our enemies are massed against us, we will prevail. The faithful need fear nothing from the armies of men, for there is a truth within us that cannot die.”_

_But the people’s hearts were filled with fear, and they heard him not. They cried again to the heavens for aid, though they knew none would come. Again the man said,_

_“Ye people, cry not! If we stand in faith, we shall be hidden from the eyes of our aggressors, and their spears will not strike us. Know the hope that comes from truth!”_

_But the people heard not. The night came, and with it the many armies of men, and all the people of that place perished in fear, and their bodies were scattered across the sands. But the body of the man who had spoken was not among them, and none who came to that place thereafter found his remains._

Histories 2, 18:1-10

\---

He went home.

No, he’s getting ahead of himself. First, he went to Ishnifus.

It wasn’t hard to find him. Once you know the signs, you know where to find the Church, and once you find the Church, you find its leader. It took Charles perhaps three days of running his fingers under the engravings on archways and counting the lines in stones to work out where the Citadel in this city was – information he had deliberately avoided acquiring for four years, information he swore once he’d never use – and then he only had to wait for the next half-moon.

The middle-aged woman at the door frowned when she looked at him from under the cowl of her robe.

“You’re him, eh? Skinner than I thought. They said you weren’t coming back.”

It was iron will that stopped Charles from shuffling uncomfortably. He’d said the same thing.

“ _Cum mundus nasceretur, hic sumus,_ ” he half-murmured. The woman shrugged, universal sign for ‘not my problem’, and finished the old words.

“ _Et d_ _um_ _tempus_ _est_ _,_ _sic sepeliam mortuum_ _._ Welcome back, brother.”

The door opened the rest of the way, and Charles passed into the gloom. The guest robe they gave him was a little too short, and the incense hanging in the air was sourer than what he remembered. But he remembered the words well enough, though he did not trust his voice to get him through the hymns.

Afterwards, as the faithful filed out of the hall, he made his way to the altar and stood patiently while the priest cleaned his knives. The man was young, for a priest, his face less lined and his hands steadier than the old men Charles remembered from his youth. A bitter voice at the back of his head suggested that they’d put a young man there to ensure there was someone Charles might find approachable. Once the knives were clean, the priest turned to him.

“You came back. I assume it wasn’t for my guidance.”

Charles kept eye contact, just. “I need to find Ishnifus.”

The priest nodded, unsurprised. “Go home. He will be by the water.”

Charles frowned. “The water? At Revere?”

A shake of the head. “You know where I mean.”

Charles did. He wished he didn’t.

\---

It was a grey day, the kind that threatens rain but never delivers, with a chill in the air that made Charles wish he’d worn something warmer. The bay was choppy, the water unsettled and coloured the same dead gunmetal as the sky.

There was sand in his shoes.

There was sand in his shoes, and Ishnifus was standing in front of him, and he looked old, and frail, and all of a sudden Charles was striding towards him, burying his face in his shoulder, feeling the familiar arms wrap around his back and the warm chuckle that had always meant that he’d done exactly what Ishnifus expected him to do.

“My boy, my boy. It is good to see you.” Ishnifus’ voice sounded like home, like a hundred cosy afternoons, a thousand words of gentle encouragement. Charles fought back the sting behind his eyes, forced himself to pull back and find his voice.

“I had to come back, Uncle. I think—“ his voice cracked, trapped under the lump in his throat. “I think I’ve found them.”

Ishnifus took hold of his shoulders, looking into his eyes in the way he did when he was a boy, to check if Absu had really eaten his scripture essay. Whatever he saw seemed to satisfy him, and a smile spread across his lined face as he nodded.

“Then it is time.”

\---

_They will be as gods, and their coming will be the end of all things._

Threnodies, 1:2

\---

The suit was new. So was the briefcase. The building wasn’t exactly old either, but it was ill-tended enough to be crumbling and dank. Busted amps littered the corridors, most of the lights weren’t working, and there was an unpleasant smell in the air, like off cheese.

The tall man in the back room turned as Charles walked in, head held high with a confidence he wasn’t sure he felt. He smiled and held out a hand.

“Hello, Mister Explosion. I’m your new manager.”


End file.
